FIELD NOTE · SUPPLEMENTAL SET
Sixty-one years to the third zone: what the April 2026 Zone 0 draft permits in the first five feet
ISSUEDJULY 11, 2026DRAWN BY THE NIGHTLY SWEEP
The mulch ring is the detail to watch. Bark or woodchip, carried right up to the stucco, drawn that way on plan set after plan set through the foothills because it holds moisture at the root crown. Nothing in the state code said otherwise, and it cleared plan check.
Then the Legislature wrote a third defensible space zone into statute, in September of 2020, and the text describing what may grow inside it was still out for comment five and a half years later.
AB 3074, Chapter 259, Statutes of 2020, signed September 29 of that year, created the ember-resistant zone in the first five feet around a structure, and directed the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection to update its guidance document by January 1, 2023. At Section 1(b) and Section 1(d) the Legislature stated its intent that existing structures be phased in over time and that enforcement be used as a last resort.
That is the shape of the whole thing, and it is why the trade keeps getting the story wrong. The rule moves in decades and the shrub against the foundation moves in seasons, and a legal document describing a fuel load arrives long after the fuel load establishes. By then it has been through two owners and a redesign.
SB 504, Chapter 982, Statutes of 2024, chaptered September 29, 2024, stretched the existing-structure phase-in from one year behind new construction to three, and required the Board's regulations to address the costs of compliance. Executive Order N-18-25, issued in February 2025 after the January fires in Los Angeles, told the Board to finish the rulemaking by December 31, 2025, and AB 1455, Chapter 731, Statutes of 2025, put that deadline into statute and exempted the whole thing from CEQA.
The deadline passed. The Oakland Firesafe Council, writing on January 5, 2026, reported that the regulations remained unfinished and unadopted, and that fire departments went into another fire season with no enforceable Zone 0 authority.
Governing's April 27, 2026 coverage had the subcommittee sending rule text to the full board by June 15, a presentation on June 17, and an expedited effective date of July 7, 2026. Months, at the end of a process that took five and a half years.
Those dates have passed. As this is written in the third week of July 2026 there is no adopted statewide Zone 0 regulation, which leaves the April 17 draft as the most recent text the Board has published, and leaves every foothill jurisdiction to decide for itself what to enforce in the meantime. Nearly six years, and the document describing the first five feet is still a draft.
Trees are permitted. They were permitted in the September 2025 FAQ too, at question 10, with exceptions for single specimens and trees protected by local ordinance. Proposed section 1298.04(b)(5) turns that into a maintenance standard: no dead or dying branches, and ladder fuels removed, including those in the first six feet from the ground or to one third of the tree's total height, and those within five feet above a roof that create a high risk of fire transmission.
None of that is a task. Ladder fuels cleared to six feet is a condition somebody re-establishes every few summers, on an organism answering to its own growth rate rather than a compliance date, and the second summer after the cut is when an owner finds that out.
Lawn is permitted. Under proposed 1298.04(b)(7), well-maintained non-woody plants under three inches tall, including lawns and ground covers, are allowed outside the buffers, and so are non-woody plants between three and eighteen inches, in plantings of no more than a square foot, spaced at one and a half times the tallest plant's height. Potted plants stay too, capped by 1298.04(b)(7)(C) at eighteen inches, in unaffixed non-combustible containers up to five gallons, set apart by one and a half times the plant's height.
What comes out is combustible material: fallen leaves and needles, bark and woodchip mulch, other debris, firewood, and anything under a deck or a stair. The draft prescribes no replacement material for the mulch, though it lets an inspector allow a temporary exception to prevent erosion.
The zone reads as a set of nested setbacks rather than a five foot band of gravel, and the deepest sit at the wall: nothing under the eaves, nothing within a foot of the structure, nothing within two feet of a window, door, or vent, nothing within five feet of a deck or stairs. Outside those lines the ground can stay green, and the wall behind it, where the the wildland-urban interface code those assemblies are built to do the work, belongs to another trade. A designer working from the trade coverage would have specified gravel to the property line.
One says removal. James Gillespie, the Newport Beach fire marshal and president of the fire marshal section of the California Fire Chiefs Association, said in April 2026 that he hoped local variations would embolden cities to adopt a stricter five foot buffer devoid of vegetation, the way Berkeley has. The City of San Diego's guidelines already open by prohibiting vegetation and combustible materials within five feet unless specifically allowed.
The other reading says maintenance, which is what the April draft says on its face, and which the Board's summary reinforces by describing implementation as education and outreach, with owners showing measurable progress over five years.
Both readings can be right on adjacent parcels. Proposed section 1298.03 lets a local fire agency adopt alternative practices on a finding of substantially similar practical effect, and Public Resources Code section 4117, in force now, lets local rules run more protective.
The person who decides whether a coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia) stays is the local defensible space inspector standing in the yard. The Board's April 2026 plain-language summary says exactly that in its TREES bullet, that the risk of transmission for each tree would be determined by the local defensible space inspector. The rule text does not. Subsection 1298.04(b)(5)(B) never names who makes the transmission finding, so the sentence a contractor needs before touching a mature canopy sits in a summary rather than in the regulation.
San Diego went first, and under Municipal Code section 512.0604, Zone 0 applied to new structures in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone on February 28, 2026, and applies to existing structures on February 28, 2027. The guidelines carrying those dates were revised April 22, 2026, and they tell owners they are not required to take any action now, which is two instructions in one document, a date and a wait.
That makes the permit record the thing that sorts a territory into two compliance schedules, which is one reason landscape contractors working fire country end up reading filings before they read guidance.
CAL FIRE, as published by the Board on September 17, 2025 at question 7, estimated 1.25 million structures in the State Responsibility Area, with another 870,000 in Local Responsibility Area Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones, together about 17 percent of the state's structures. They are also the reason foothill neighborhoods in Los Angeles put up "HANDS OFF OUR YARDS" signs during the workshop cycle, and the reason the April draft permits plants.
Whether that is a failed deadline or a functioning process depends on which clock is read. The Board ran nearly a dozen public workshops, site visits and academic reviews, and the text that came out is materially different from what would have been adopted on the original schedule. It also ran past the January 2023 guidance deadline, the December 2025 rulemaking deadline, and a fire season. Meanwhile the retrofit collides with what went in last, because a bed installed under a rebate-funded turf conversion is the same bed that has to lose its bark mulch inside the first five feet, on ground an owner already paid to replant.
In San Diego the existing-structure date is February 28, 2027, which leaves one more winter. The work at the foundation is a flat shovel, a tarp, and a rake through the gutter line, and the crew doing it leaves the ground under the eave bare. The tree over it stays.
Then the Legislature wrote a third defensible space zone into statute, in September of 2020, and the text describing what may grow inside it was still out for comment five and a half years later.
AB 3074, Chapter 259, Statutes of 2020, signed September 29 of that year, created the ember-resistant zone in the first five feet around a structure, and directed the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection to update its guidance document by January 1, 2023. At Section 1(b) and Section 1(d) the Legislature stated its intent that existing structures be phased in over time and that enforcement be used as a last resort.
1965, 2006, and the third zone
The Board's published FAQ, dated September 17, 2025, lays the sequence out at question 2. Zone 1, the first thirty feet, was established in 1965, Zone 2, from thirty feet out to a hundred, was added in 2006, and Zone 0 would be the third of them. Forty-one years between the first and the second, and twenty years between the second and the draft rule text released for the third in April 2026.That is the shape of the whole thing, and it is why the trade keeps getting the story wrong. The rule moves in decades and the shrub against the foundation moves in seasons, and a legal document describing a fuel load arrives long after the fuel load establishes. By then it has been through two owners and a redesign.
SB 504, Chapter 982, Statutes of 2024, chaptered September 29, 2024, stretched the existing-structure phase-in from one year behind new construction to three, and required the Board's regulations to address the costs of compliance. Executive Order N-18-25, issued in February 2025 after the January fires in Los Angeles, told the Board to finish the rulemaking by December 31, 2025, and AB 1455, Chapter 731, Statutes of 2025, put that deadline into statute and exempted the whole thing from CEQA.
The deadline passed. The Oakland Firesafe Council, writing on January 5, 2026, reported that the regulations remained unfinished and unadopted, and that fire departments went into another fire season with no enforceable Zone 0 authority.
Governing's April 27, 2026 coverage had the subcommittee sending rule text to the full board by June 15, a presentation on June 17, and an expedited effective date of July 7, 2026. Months, at the end of a process that took five and a half years.
Those dates have passed. As this is written in the third week of July 2026 there is no adopted statewide Zone 0 regulation, which leaves the April 17 draft as the most recent text the Board has published, and leaves every foothill jurisdiction to decide for itself what to enforce in the meantime. Nearly six years, and the document describing the first five feet is still a draft.
What the April 17 draft permits
On April 17, 2026 the Board's Zone 0 subcommittee released updated draft rule text for a public workshop held April 23, proposing sections at Title 14, 1298.01 through 1298.04. Those numbers may change on adoption, and everything below comes from that draft.Trees are permitted. They were permitted in the September 2025 FAQ too, at question 10, with exceptions for single specimens and trees protected by local ordinance. Proposed section 1298.04(b)(5) turns that into a maintenance standard: no dead or dying branches, and ladder fuels removed, including those in the first six feet from the ground or to one third of the tree's total height, and those within five feet above a roof that create a high risk of fire transmission.
None of that is a task. Ladder fuels cleared to six feet is a condition somebody re-establishes every few summers, on an organism answering to its own growth rate rather than a compliance date, and the second summer after the cut is when an owner finds that out.
Lawn is permitted. Under proposed 1298.04(b)(7), well-maintained non-woody plants under three inches tall, including lawns and ground covers, are allowed outside the buffers, and so are non-woody plants between three and eighteen inches, in plantings of no more than a square foot, spaced at one and a half times the tallest plant's height. Potted plants stay too, capped by 1298.04(b)(7)(C) at eighteen inches, in unaffixed non-combustible containers up to five gallons, set apart by one and a half times the plant's height.
What comes out is combustible material: fallen leaves and needles, bark and woodchip mulch, other debris, firewood, and anything under a deck or a stair. The draft prescribes no replacement material for the mulch, though it lets an inspector allow a temporary exception to prevent erosion.
The zone reads as a set of nested setbacks rather than a five foot band of gravel, and the deepest sit at the wall: nothing under the eaves, nothing within a foot of the structure, nothing within two feet of a window, door, or vent, nothing within five feet of a deck or stairs. Outside those lines the ground can stay green, and the wall behind it, where the the wildland-urban interface code those assemblies are built to do the work, belongs to another trade. A designer working from the trade coverage would have specified gravel to the property line.
Removal or maintenance, and who decides
There are two honest readings of this rule and they have not been reconciled.One says removal. James Gillespie, the Newport Beach fire marshal and president of the fire marshal section of the California Fire Chiefs Association, said in April 2026 that he hoped local variations would embolden cities to adopt a stricter five foot buffer devoid of vegetation, the way Berkeley has. The City of San Diego's guidelines already open by prohibiting vegetation and combustible materials within five feet unless specifically allowed.
The other reading says maintenance, which is what the April draft says on its face, and which the Board's summary reinforces by describing implementation as education and outreach, with owners showing measurable progress over five years.
Both readings can be right on adjacent parcels. Proposed section 1298.03 lets a local fire agency adopt alternative practices on a finding of substantially similar practical effect, and Public Resources Code section 4117, in force now, lets local rules run more protective.
The person who decides whether a coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia) stays is the local defensible space inspector standing in the yard. The Board's April 2026 plain-language summary says exactly that in its TREES bullet, that the risk of transmission for each tree would be determined by the local defensible space inspector. The rule text does not. Subsection 1298.04(b)(5)(B) never names who makes the transmission finding, so the sentence a contractor needs before touching a mature canopy sits in a summary rather than in the regulation.
San Diego went first, and under Municipal Code section 512.0604, Zone 0 applied to new structures in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone on February 28, 2026, and applies to existing structures on February 28, 2027. The guidelines carrying those dates were revised April 22, 2026, and they tell owners they are not required to take any action now, which is two instructions in one document, a date and a wait.
The permit application is the switch
Under proposed 1298.02(c) and (e), whether a structure is New or Existing turns on when the building permit application for its initial construction was submitted, before or after the effective date. New structures comply on the effective date. Existing structures get three years for the combustible material and tree maintenance requirements, and three to five years for the under-eave buffer, the fences and the outbuildings. The local fire agency picks which.That makes the permit record the thing that sorts a territory into two compliance schedules, which is one reason landscape contractors working fire country end up reading filings before they read guidance.
CAL FIRE, as published by the Board on September 17, 2025 at question 7, estimated 1.25 million structures in the State Responsibility Area, with another 870,000 in Local Responsibility Area Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones, together about 17 percent of the state's structures. They are also the reason foothill neighborhoods in Los Angeles put up "HANDS OFF OUR YARDS" signs during the workshop cycle, and the reason the April draft permits plants.
Whether that is a failed deadline or a functioning process depends on which clock is read. The Board ran nearly a dozen public workshops, site visits and academic reviews, and the text that came out is materially different from what would have been adopted on the original schedule. It also ran past the January 2023 guidance deadline, the December 2025 rulemaking deadline, and a fire season. Meanwhile the retrofit collides with what went in last, because a bed installed under a rebate-funded turf conversion is the same bed that has to lose its bark mulch inside the first five feet, on ground an owner already paid to replant.
In San Diego the existing-structure date is February 28, 2027, which leaves one more winter. The work at the foundation is a flat shovel, a tarp, and a rake through the gutter line, and the crew doing it leaves the ground under the eave bare. The tree over it stays.